Sunday, June 14, 2009

Johnny Benson In Serious Condition After SuperMod Accident

Late Saturday night came word that current Camping World Truck Series Champion and well-known driver Johnny Benson had been injured in a racing accident.

Click here for the original story from the MLive.com website. Benson was racing his SuperMod (shown above) and wound-up in an accident that caused a fire.

Click here for the WZZM follow-up story that listed Benson in serious condition at a local Grand Rapids, MI hospital.

Report was that JB was awake and alert when removed from the car after the fire. These are high-speed open wheel cars and are a handful.

Click here for an article where JB talks about his new supermod and racing.

1:30AM ET Update: Hospital told WOOD-TV that Benson is in serious but stable condition. Continued to say "he's expected to be fine." Great news. More Monday morning.

Sunday morning update: JB is resting in the hospital and told his sister Barb that she looks worse than he does. I will take that to mean he is going to be fine. One broken rib on the injury report right now, more info when available. (Get some sleep Barb!)

TDP will continue to update this information. Benson is a NASCAR favorite for his personality, his driving skills and his many years on TV with Michael Waltrip and Kenny Schrader on Monday nights.

Man, JB is having a tough week. First losing his truck ride, and now this, which probably wouldn't have happened if he had kept his truck ride. I really hope he'll be ok, at least he's stable.

I don't know exactly what happened, but I've always wondered about the safety at Berlin. Went there a few times before I moved to Detroit last month; Berlin doesn't even have a wall on the backstretch, this sounds like it was in the turns so I hope that wasn't part of this, but I wish they would get around to redressing that.

Johnny Benson is one of the class acts in NASCAR. It's an absolute disgrace that he's currently without a ride in any series. If he's racing where he belongs, he doesn't have this wreck in a Supermod race.

I'm truly happy that he's going to be okay. My thoughts are with JB and his family.

Saw his interview after getting out of the hospital, great to see that Johnny is in good spirits and ready to start getting back to working on the car! That's a racer right there to say the least. Hopefully in the next couple weeks we will hear some news regarding the remainder of the truck season.

Just really great to see he is alright, and had nothing but good things to say about the safety crew at Berlin and that the car held up well